Valentine’s Day tends to rouse the dormant Scrooge in me, I have to admit. It’s the ooey-gooeyness of it all that makes me cringe. Lest you think I have a heart of stone, au contraire, I assure you.  I rather love the romantic gesture, just not when it’s mandated by the giant economic machine d’amour which begins stocking the supermarket shelves with heart-shaped boxes of chocolates before the Christmas tinsel is put away. So what’s a girl to do when she despises pre-printed proclamations of passion courtesy of Hallmark?

I turn to poetry for consolation, that’s what. Why do I love Ogden Nash so? Because he has exactly the right dose of ooey-gooey to make this granite heart swell.